


Bright Heart

by ancientreader



Category: Greek Mythology, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 08:22:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5368262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientreader/pseuds/ancientreader
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the center of the Labyrinth lives a monster — or so it’s said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bright Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [what_alchemy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/gifts).



> Expect violence; slanderous allegations of bestiality; and archaeological and historical solecisms galore. Oh, yeah, also sexytimes. 
> 
> A Holmestice gift for the admirable [what_alchemy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/profile), who I hope enjoys it as much as I enjoyed writing it -- which is to say, a great deal!

It’s all very well having a skein of wool, Chariton thinks, but if he can’t find anything on which to anchor it, he might as well sit down and use it to play cat’s-cradle till the Minotaur turns up. After an hour’s squinting in the brilliant Kretan sun while Minos droned on about the price of betrayal and the rightness of sacrifice and the blood of princes and whatever other shit he was using to mask the stink of the murders he had already committed and planned to commit in future, Chariton finds his vision adjusting only slowly to the deep cool dark that sets in past the first turn of the Labyrinth. He pats up and down the walls for protuberances: nothing. The quality of the masonry is the best he’s ever seen — felt, that is — perfectly smooth everywhere his hands trace. 

Handing Chariton the skein, Micythos had said: “Bravery is by far the kindest word for stupidity, don’t you think?” and looked down his long nose as if with contempt — “as if,” because why give the skein if he thought so little of the one to whom he gave it? And Micythos was Minos’ son; why ... ? 

Chariton had been a soldier, once; he has learned to ignore questions that can’t be answered. The skein of wool is an advantage. He doesn’t need to know anything else about it.

He would like to put an end to the monster at the heart of the maze, because in doing so lies the chance of putting an end to Minos’ endless extractions of human tribute. The walls of the maze, the impossibility of leaving it once he has found its heart — _if_ he finds its heart — these don’t seem very different from the rest of his life now that he can’t be a soldier. Whatever Micythos thinks, thought, Chariton believes he is neither especially brave nor especially stupid; he isn’t afraid simply because, as far as the outcome concerns himself, he doesn’t care.

However, it’ll be no use to kill the Minotaur, if no one knows of it because the killer has died in the Labyrinth afterward. Even if Minos suspects what has happened, he will go on sending sacrifices; whether they die torn by the Minotaur or wander till they collapse won’t matter to him. Chariton has seen it in his face: it’s the deaths themselves that Minos craves. 

Chariton’s girdle has a heavy clasp and ought to do for an anchor, if he is careful not to pull it along behind him as he goes. He secures the end of the skein, lays down the girdle, and in the dark he goes forward.

*  
At each branching dark way, he bears left; if or when he comes to a dead end, he will work backward, trying each right-hand branch. 

*

It is very dark; darkness so thick seems to grow darker and darker yet, as minutes and hours pass in unseeing. Minutes and hours? There is no way to mark time in silence and darkness; he can’t even count off because, strangely, with nothing to see and nothing to hear, even the slightest distraction disorders his thinking. Occasionally something flashes in his vision; Chariton tells himself it’s an illusion born of his eyes’ attempt to perceive something, anything. It’s not the unquiet spirit of last year’s sacrificed youth, or yesterday’s. 

His sense of smell has plenty to occupy it, plenty real and thick enough. Stale piss-smell because those who came before him made water in the corners of the walls. No doubt some of them had to shit, too, or shat themselves with fright or in death. Chariton tries not to think about the possibility that he might step in it. A mishap to laugh at in an alleyway, but not here. Also the thought of stepping in shit leads to the worse thought that his foot might find not the leavings of a body but a body itself. _But you would smell that from a distance_ , he reminds himself. Or the Minotaur might have scoured with its sharp teeth every scrap of flesh from the bones. In that case he would knock into them, and they might rattle, but they wouldn’t stink of rot and filth ...

Minos had shown the sacrifices images of the Minotaur — so they could prepare their spirits, he said; so as to terrify them more thoroughly, Chariton thought. The giant body of a man; the giant head of a bull where the giant head of a man should be. The tail, lashing. The teeth: why does the offspring of a woman and a bull have teeth like a wolf’s? It seems strange. But then the gods are always a puzzle, and the Minotaur was born of woman but is, when you come down to it, the offspring not so much of a woman and a bull as of a god’s anger. 

Chariton didn’t curl his lip at Minos, the striker of terror into girls and boys, though it cost him something to hold back. Minos looked at him sidelong: _What is this one doing here? Older than the rest, limping, crippled by a shoulder wound._ Chariton could see Minos asking himself this, wondering, suspicious. It would be dishonorable to be executed for insulting the King and never to enter the Labyrinth. Dishonorable, and a waste. Chariton is content to spend his life but he wants to spend it well.

*

At last, a dead end.

Chariton leans against the blank invisible wall, wondering about the passage of time. It’s cool in the Labyrinth, but he is thirsty. He takes two swallows from his water skin; considers; takes a third. _Be frugal with the water, but not so frugal that when you find the Minotaur, or it finds you, you are already weak from thirst._

And too tired to fight — for the careful step, step, step required in total darkness wears on the muscles harder than a march to cover ground. He needs rest, and there can be no safer place than this, where the Minotaur can approach from only one direction and Chariton knows which direction that is. That he is boxed in makes no difference: if in fighting the Minotaur in an open corridor he drops the skein, this game is done. 

Chariton nods briskly to no one and lets himself sink into the corner where the corridor meets its end. He wraps the wool thread around his ankle to keep it safe. He closes his eyes. He will not long for a breeze, or for sunlight, a blanket, warm bare skin next his own. 

*  
Chariton sleeps, undisturbed by dreams or monsters.

*  
When he wakes, his bladder is full; he stands, stretches, massages his bad shoulder, and turns toward the wall to piss. Just in time he remembers to take up the skein lest the puddle he makes reach it. 

It is perhaps a waste of water to rinse his teeth, but if he doesn’t then the foul waking taste in his mouth will occupy a fragment of his attention that he can’t spare.

Back, then, toward the last turning. The coarse strong wool between his fingers. Chariton takes it up carefully, not pulling, winding it around his weak left hand. One step, another step. The darkness is so heavy, heavier yet than it seemed before he slept. He finds the turning whose left branch led to a dead end and tries the other branch. 

It, too, dead-ends.

It would be so easy, in the dark and silence and stink, to believe that all the branches are dead ends — that the way back to the entrance had sealed itself off, like a wound healing over an arrow point.

He, Chariton, is the arrow point. The thought calms him. He hasn’t limped since he entered the darkness, he notices, and sets the realization aside to consider later.

Back again. The right branch of the turning dead-ends.

_If there is a later._

Back. Dead-end. 

Back. Dead-end.

Does he, after all, want there to be a later?

Back. No dead-end. 

No dead-end.

Dead-end. 

Chariton stops to rest a few moments and to listen. Either the Minotaur doesn’t breathe like other live things, or it’s not nearby. Nothing scurries, nothing squeaks in the Labyrinth. Perhaps the Minotaur eats rodents to tide it over between annual sacrifices. 

Nothing smells here, either. So those who preceded him either went left as he has done but didn’t get so far, or they went right all the way back at that first branch ... At the thought of retracing his steps so far, Chariton groans a little, inwardly, and yet ... 

... this is surprisingly like war, in that it is dull and will continue dull right up until the moment when it becomes terrifying. He is bored, yes. He is also enjoying himself so much, in anticipation of that ecstatic terror, that he has to stop himself from humming.

Back. The right branch of the turning does not dead-end.

No dead-end.

No dead-end —

At the sixth or seventh or eighth turning (it doesn’t matter: that’s what the skein is for), the darkness before him softens. The effect is quite unlike the illusion-brilliant flashes Chariton has been seeing out of the corners of his eyes for — however long it is now. He inhales deeply; the air here is not dead and empty of scent. It’s fresh air: sun-warmed, moving air. Has he somehow come all the way through the Labyrinth and back to the entrance without encountering the monster?

Letting length after length from the skein play out behind him, Chariton approaches the lesser darkness.

It’s not the entrance. It’s —

— the center. He hears the play of water, and —

— footsteps —

—quiet, but not as quiet as, say, those of a soldier who has survived by learning to spy undiscovered on the camp of the enemy —

— Chariton whirls, thrusts, misses —

— his opponent stumbles —

— _now_ —

— Chariton’s sword point is at the Minotaur’s throat —

— and he draws back, gasping. “Gods. I nearly killed you. The Minotaur — ”

From the shadowed earth outside the doorway to the center of the Labyrinth, the naked man says, lazily, “Ah, yes. The Minotaur.”

Chariton extends his hand. “It’ll kill you, come, get up.”

The man rises without taking Chariton’s hand. “The Minotaur won’t harm me.” He is tall — very tall, for a Kretan — and well-made, but strange-looking, with tilted eyes like seawater, and black hair but skin paler than Chariton has ever seen. Though his voice is deep and his prick and balls are those of a man grown, he is beardless as a boy. He is studying Chariton closely. He says, rapidly: 

“You didn’t draw the short straw in a lottery and you weren’t picked by the high priest. You _chose_ to come.” His tone is incredulous. “You’re no just-fledged youth, either. You were a soldier. Your left arm — Are you mad? ... No, no you’re not. Your family are laborers. Or perhaps they buy and sell. You can’t soldier. You can’t labor, not with that arm. You’re reduced to — yes, I see. You’re looking to sell your life but sell it dear.

“Considered in that light, your being here makes sense, I suppose. You might even say I’m after the same thing.”

Chariton is listening half to the man’s speech, half for hooves stamping fast toward them. “What are you — That was wondrous. But we’ve got to get you out of here. The Minotaur — ”

The man gives a little bark. He is not from Mytilene, not with that Kretan accent, no, nor yet from Thessaly. “Soldier,” the man says, “ _I_ am the Minotaur.”

And, when Chariton doesn’t move: “Aren’t you going to kill me?”

Chariton produces the only reply that makes any sense to him at the moment: “I can’t. You’re not armed.”

*

This is the story Chariton knows — the story everyone knows:

Minos had a bull, white as myrtle blossoms and meant for sacrifice; but his wife, Pasiphaë, daughter of Helios and Perse, burned with lust for the animal and had artful Daedalus build her the wooden shape of a cow, concealed in which she was brought before the bull and bred by him. And of that congress, the Minotaur was born.

There is a second version of the story, which Chariton like everyone also knows. This version is told in whispers, in beds, in corners, in the farthest fields, when the teller has taken too much wine: 

The sea-god Poseidon sent Minos a bull, white as myrtle blossoms, a sign of the god’s favor and meant for sacrifice. But so beautiful was the animal that Minos desired to keep it; instead of returning the god’s white bull through proper sacrifice, he found a substitute: also a white bull, also beautiful; but not so beautiful as the god’s bull, and not the god’s bull. 

The sea-god took his revenge. _Do you covet the lovely bull?_ his revenge said. _So then will your wife, the Sun’s daughter, noble Pasiphaë, covet him too._ And of that congress, the Minotaur was born.

*

“People,” says the man who says he is the Minotaur, “will believe anything. Especially, they’ll believe it if it’s salacious enough.”

The conversation has moved to the circular room at the center of the Labyrinth. If it were elsewhere, the spot would be a pleasant one, grassy and sunlit — for there is no roof, though there is a pallet under an awning: in the middle of the room, a clear spring bubbles. The Minotaur has a bowl and a cup. He offers Chariton water, oatcakes, cheese. Down that passageway — he points — he has an earthenware pot to do his business in. Chariton is welcome to use it too.

“What really happened, then?” Chariton asks.

“How do women usually come by infants not sired by their husbands? She had a dalliance with a man, of course. I mean a human man — not Kretan, I think” (the Minotaur gestures at his face, his hair, his pale skin; _that must be what gave the King the idea for that tale of a white bull_ , Chariton realizes) “— and not, I suppose, one of high rank, else the King would see in me a claimant to the throne, and I would be dead rather than ... as you find me. Fortunately — _is_ it fortunate? — I’m just a traveler’s by-blow.”

“What became of your father?”

The Minotaur shrugs. “Ask Minos.”

“I don’t understand. Why didn’t he kill you?”

“He’s punishing my mother, of course. She offended him, I’m the result, what better punishment than to let us both live and to put me here once I reached manhood? She knows how I live and what I must do if I am to continue to live. And what better incentive for me to remain alive than to know that if I die my mother dies too?”

In Chariton’s understanding, the proper fate of a woman who has betrayed her husband is for him to decide, and he may kill her if he chooses ... Yet this is something else again. “This is the third year of the Minotaur. How many ... ? And two sacrifices before me, this year.” He feels sick. The man before him doesn’t resemble a monster, but — Chariton studies his fingers, counts on them in his mind: fourteen in each of the first two years, and the two before him this year ... But he, Chariton, has killed in battle ... Would not he kill, and then kill again, if it meant his own life and (because a son must honor the womb that gave birth to him and the breasts that gave him suck, no matter what the woman has done) his mother’s?

“I have killed two.”

Chariton waits. The Minotaur’s face is stiff and he looks elsewhere, not at Chariton, who still has his sword and could slay him now, this moment. The Minotaur says:

“I know the Labyrinth; the sacrifices don’t. They get lost and die, they die of thirst or go mad and turn their weapons against themselves in the darkness. All I need do is avoid them.

“I can hear them, of course. Perhaps it would be better to be what you think me.”

The Minotaur closes his mouth. Color has risen in his face. _He longs to talk,_ Chariton thinks, for what else could make a man say such things to a stranger, and remembers nights with his fellow soldiers, someone’s speared rabbit or pilfered chicken roasting on the fire, the watered wine easing their dry throats as they talked, talked, talked ... 

“Wait. Someone must bring you food.”

The Minotaur looks surprised, as if he had not thought this question would occur to Chariton. “The Labyrinth’s builder knows the way; he comes. With a blind servant to bear off the pot with my soil.”

“Good health to both of them,” says Chariton without thinking, and to his surprise, the Minotaur laughs.

He laughs genuinely, with his whole body; on Chariton there comes a fancy of running his fingers through those black curls, with the Minotaur’s head thrown back; his right hand goes, unbidden, to his ruined shoulder. He has reached his twenty-fifth year; he isn’t young. 

Neither, come to that, is the Minotaur, though he must be all of nineteen.

“My name is Chariton.”

The Mino— No. The _man_ ’s eyes go wide. “Don’t,” he says. “ _Don’t_.”

In offering his name, Chariton has presumed. He says, stiffly: “Of course. Your mother is the daughter of the Sun; who am I —”

“ _Shut up._ Don’t — don’t try to put this on a footing of — of _friendship_. You have to kill me, don’t you understand?”

“What are you talking about? I’m not going to kill you.”

“Of course you are. I’ll bring you to a spot near the entrance, where you can find your way out again, afterward. You’ll be quick, I think I can ask for that much. I don’t know what trophy you’ll take, my head won’t be very convincing as the head of a monster bull, but we’ll work something out about that, you’ll emerge from the Labyrinth covered in blood, a hero — ”

“For once for all, _I am not going to kill you!_ ”

“You must. You can’t stay here, I can’t leave here, therefore one of us has to die.”

“You’ve already told me that if you die Pasiphaë dies.”

“The situation has changed, since we are planning this together —”

“We are _not_ — ”

“You will be the hero of the hour. Minos will be sick with rage but he’ll have to promise you a prize of your choosing. Ask for a woman. Ask for my mother.”

“ _What?_ ”

“She’s beautiful. Everyone says so. The daughter of Helios and Perse. You can — ”

“I don’t want your mother. I want you.”

“ _What?_ ”

They stare at each other. The (strange, beautiful) man narrows his eyes. Chariton can’t speak at once, for shock at himself. He _wants something._ More than one something: A future. To place his hands upon the not-Minotaur and hear him cry out in bliss. To go — Here his imagination fails him; he doesn’t even know the names of any cities. To go where? To feed himself how? And yet ... 

“I — It doesn’t matter. I don’t take what I’m not given. You don’t have to — There’s no price. But Micythos will help us.”

The man startles. “What are you talking about?”

Chariton scrambles into the dim-then-dark of the corridor where they met. “Micythos. He gave me — Where is it, I dropped it when — Here. Don’t pull, the thread’s anchored at the entrance.”

The man cradles the skein, biting his lips. He seems otherwise unable to move. When he looks back at Chariton his eyes are bright. “I am Scylax,” he says.

*  
As communications go, a skein of wool would not seem terribly explicit, but Scylax reads it as easily as Chariton would read a landscape of battle. Micythos would — Scylax explains — expect his brother to have learned the Labyrinth’s passages; the skein is not to guide him or even Chariton out. It had prepared Chariton to investigate the Labyrinth systematically, and so he found Scylax; it now informs Scylax that Micythos has readied a means to free him and Pasiphaë. 

“I might have killed you, though, had my strike been true,” Chariton objects.

“He would have to take that chance.”

What terrible coldness there must be in Micythos; yet his gamble is paying out, so far, and Scylax seems untroubled. “Why give me the skein, and not some other?”

“You don’t know? Of course you don’t. He saw in you what I saw: a soldier who longs for the battlefield. Your mind’s no better than anyone else’s” — Chariton gives Scylax a dirty look for this — “No, don’t be that way, the point is that even if your mind’s no better, you know how to use it. Do you have any idea how quickly most of the sacrifices panic?”

It’s not good to think of. Chariton shakes his head.

“If the sun moves an eighth of the distance from one wall to the other of my chamber before the weeping and pleading begin, I call that a cool head.”

“He goaded me.”

“Naturally he did. He knew as soon as he saw you that it would steady you.”

— And as soon as he stepped into the dark, it was as if his limp had never been. Chariton might think the two of them, Micythos and Scylax, were sorcerers, only the places where soldiers go to drink are always busy with fortune-tellers promising luck and sorcerers peddling charms and visions, and it has long been Chariton’s private opinion, unpopular among men whose work is to kill and to die, that they are all frauds. When it comes to a sharp eye and a brain quicker than his own, though, he believes.

“Chariton,” Scylax says. He is standing straight, in fact almost like a man who has taken up arms, and his gaze is direct. “Micythos will be expecting us just after nightfall: it is the only time, excepting dawn, that we can mark as well as he, and at night the crowds will have gone. We have some hours to wait until then. You would not be taking what is not given.”

*

Like all men, Chariton has lain with men before. As a young recruit he had welcomed the attentions of his seniors, who taught him both to fight and to give pleasure; later, it was he who taught, and in teaching learned to take pleasure. There were rules.

Kretans evidently don’t have rules, or anyhow Scylax doesn’t, and he makes short work of Chariton’s, kissing and squirming and making noise like a woman, so shameless that Chariton loses control of himself too: clutching Scylax, rubbing his mouth wetly over that pale, pale skin, allowing Scylax to roll him onto his back and press his wrists into the grass above his head as if taking him prisoner. He arches his neck into Scylax’s teeth and tongue and before he knows quite what he’s doing he has opened his legs — _opened his legs!_ — and wrapped them hard around Scylax’s hips, pulling him in close, thrusting his hips as if to enter Scylax or take him inside, or both at once, he doesn’t know, and then Scylax shocks him more than he thought it was possible to be shocked by sliding down his body like an eel and sucking him and then spitting Chariton’s seed onto his own prick and bringing himself off on Chariton’s belly while Chariton cups Scylax’s face and utters words such as he has never spoken to anyone before, not even to a woman, and Scylax says, “Yes, I will. I will, I will, this, I want to fuck you, I want you to fuck me, we’ll go everywhere together — ”

Afterward, Chariton thinks he should be ashamed, or angry; but that life is done, farther away with every moment. In this new life his heart is mighty with joy and he is beside one from whom he will never willingly be parted again.

“You wanted to die,” Scylax says, into Chariton’s scar. “Don’t. Don’t want that anymore.”

Chariton knows he isn’t as clever as Scylax, but he can hear a pronoun when it’s missing; he presses Scylax close, warm against the ache deep in the healed wound.

*

They dare not let themselves drift into sleep. If they leave it too late, and miss Micythos, they will have to wait out another day, with perhaps another sacrifice sent in. Scylax’s voice thins when he says this, like a chord with most of the notes dropped out. 

To pass the time, Chariton thinks to entertain Scylax with some of the less lurid stories from his campaigns; Scylax diverts him from this intention at once, however, with questions about what sorts of wounds are produced by which weapons, and — when he discovers that Chariton has at every opportunity observed their work — how a surgeon might treat those wounds, and then it is Chariton’s turn to divert Scylax, because Scylax has said, almost idly, “They should stock papyrus and ink for the surgeons, to keep records of their treatments’ success,” which means, it must mean, that Scylax knows how to read and write, and he can —

“Teach me,” Chariton says — begs; his heart is pounding in his ears. He ends by writing his name with a narrow sharp stone in the dirt, over and over, and then scratching single characters all around the chamber and making Scylax read them out, to prove to himself that such and such a mark can always tell the one seeing it to make exactly such and such a sound. It’s sorcery. Sorcery that anyone can do.

*  
In the waning afternoon both of them bathe in the spring. Scylax has no clothing and rejects the suggestion to improvise with linen from his pallet. He knocks down the awning, smashes the cup and bowl. “I want nothing from here,” he says. “I would call down curses on it.” Chariton finds it unthinkable, even with the prospect of only a couple of hours’ easy walk, not to fill his water skin when water is available. Scylax finally bends that far — “But at the entrance we must pour it out,” and will not give. 

*  
Chariton finds himself more reluctant than he might have expected to go into the dark again, never mind that the Labyrinth is now no more than an unusually complicated passageway. Scylax, too, admits to feeling uneasy: however much he longs to be free of this place and free of Minos, he has been alone for a long time, and more or less safe with it. Even he can’t read his brother’s plans in detail from a skein of wool.

They go side by side, always close enough to bump against each other occasionally; Chariton winds up the wool as they go, while Scylax simply walks, without even a pause at the turnings. Time grows indefinite again. “There’s a pit,” Scylax says at some point, his voice flat, “in one of the blind corridors about halfway between the entrance and my— the chamber. The builder planned carefully, you see; he even showed me how to find the spot. I dragged them all there, the ones I killed, and the ones I only heard as they died. No proper burials for the sacrifices. I was glad just to keep down the stink.”

Chariton’s horror at this extends in so many directions he can’t think of anything to say. He settles for laying a hand on Scylax’s back in the darkness and feels his lover let out a shuddering breath. No, he would not, any more than Scylax did, want so much as a rag to wrap his hips in from this place. 

*

The entrance appears before them as a patch of deepest violet; they will wait a little longer, till full dark. Scylax kneels with his hands on the perfect wall and bows his head. If Chariton did the same, it would mean he was praying, but Scylax is not Chariton. Chariton watches. Scylax will explain later, perhaps, or he will not. 

Just as Chariton is thinking that he can barely distinguish the inner wall of the entrance from the darkness it frames, Scylax rises, graceful and evidently composed. He takes Chariton’s water skin and swings it in an arc across the width of the passage behind them, back and forth, three times until it is drained. Chariton can just make out the white vertical of his legs and torso, the white branch that is his moving arm. 

Scylax hands him the empty water skin and kisses his mouth. Side by side, they walk from the enclosed darkness into open space. 

*

No one lingers near the Labyrinth at night. Below the promontory where it stands, the sea breaks; Chariton had not heard it yesterday — yesterday? Chariton realizes he has no idea whether a day or two or three have passed; it would take little to convince him that he has been gone from the world a year — had not heard it over the frightened silence of the sacrifices and over the sound of Minos pouring out his satisfaction. 

The skies are clear and the moon has just begun to wane; now that they are not moving, Chariton sees, Scylax has begun to shiver. He pulls Scylax close and arranges his peplos over both of them. 

The skein of wool signifies a promise, he tells himself.

*

The moon has crossed only a sliver of sky when they hear footsteps from the direction of Knossos. Four persons, striding; Chariton wonders whether this will be an execution after all. He rests his good hand on his sword.

First is Micythos. Then a woman, veiled. Then two men, attendants, unarmed, bearing packs. Scylax lets go of Chariton. “My brother,” he says, “my lady mother,” and bows, covering his face. 

Chariton, not knowing what is proper, takes a step backward, so that Micythos, Pasiphaë, and Scylax make a figure that does not include him. He does not attempt to identify the sensation in his breast.

“My child.” Pasiphaë draws aside her veil and opens her arms; Scylax walks into the embrace, pressing against her bosom. A harsh sound comes from him. The moonlight shows Pasiphaë’s face, wet; she sways with Scylax in her arms. No one speaks. After a time, Pasiphaë puts Scylax away from her and kisses his forehead; his face is soft. 

Micythos clears his throat and one of the attendants hands Scylax a bundle of cloth. “The tide,” Micythos says, blandly; and, as Scylax dresses, “It seemed unlikely you would wish to remain.”

“What of Minos?”

Chariton expects Micythos to answer this, but the voice that says, “Minos may rot in the tomb he made for my son,” seems to come from everywhere; it belongs to Pasiphaë, and when he turns to look her hair is as a crown of fire and her eyes are the sea: no, it is not Micythos who will rule over Krete now, Chariton understands. 

“Sacrifice,” says Micythos — “ _Chariton_ ,” Scylax puts in, sharply; Micythos raises an eyebrow — “Very well then: Chariton.”

A summons to approach; Chariton obeys it, trying not to bristle. Micythos sighs. “I suppose I should be grateful that you are not easily frightened.” He hands Chariton a purse, and its duplicate to Scylax. “The captain sails for Chalcis. I need hardly say how unlikely it is that more gold can reach you, or that any of us will meet again.”

Sorrow passes, quick as an owl, over Scylax’s face. “Less unlikely than it seemed these years past, brother Micythos.” What look passes between them, Chariton cannot tell; then Micythos nods and makes a blessing over Scylax. Pasiphaë does the same; Scylax takes the pack the first attendant offers him and is gone down the path from the promontory’s edge to the harbor before Chariton can speak or move.

 _No_. Chariton seizes the second pack and bolts, forgetting altogether to make obeisance to the goddess and the goddess’s elder son. Scylax, taller, loping, is already halfway to the bottom. Chariton doesn’t waste his breath on calling out to him but only runs. He catches Scylax at the last step — takes hold of him and spins him roughly round. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“You _heard_ ,” Scylax says, vicious. “You heard. Micythos is right, I must leave Krete and not return. I’m known to be a monster and a murderer. It was Minos who imprisoned me and kept the people safe. They cannot rid the island of Minos and let the Minotaur live. You have gold now — is your purse as heavy as mine? Yes, I thought so. Stay. Be the hero who slew the Minotaur. Or just be — a, a townsman of Knossos. Build yourself a house. Be safe and happy. Take you a wife. Make puppies. _I don’t want you with me_ , do you understand?” And he takes hold of Chariton and shoves him backward, hard, into the cliff wall.

The arrow that ruined Chariton’s shoulder was nothing to this. He throws a hand over his mouth and tries not to let the noise behind it escape.

“Chariton!”

It is the voice from everywhere.

Pasiphaë stands before him, blazing. Good. She will kill him now for his failure to pay her the proper respect when he ran after Scylax. Behind her, Scylax is receding; will soon be gone. _Kill me._

“Chariton. Do you trust my son?”

She does not mean Micythos.

“Yes.”

“Do you believe the last words he spoke to you?”

Isn’t that the same question?

“No,” Chariton says, “no I don’t” — 

— and he is running along the dock, an arrow, a hawk, the very god of flight has taken him —

*

The Minotaur fades into legend. This doesn’t take as long as you might think: Minos is gone, the Labyrinth is razed, Daedalus who built it finds Krete less hospitable than formerly and takes ship for Sicily, though not before putting it about that he has devised a method by which featherless bipeds can fly. 

Two men, resident for the time in Shedet where one is enhancing his knowledge of medicine and the other has established a reputation for his knack of unmasking liars and finding lost or stolen things, hear a tale of a warrior with a spool of golden thread; the story features a lovesick princess, the lovers’ flight from Knossos, abandonment and betrayal. The Minotaur’s head stood on a pike at the city gates and even the flies would not touch it, the teller informs them in awe. The two listeners nod gravely, biting their lips to keep from laughing aloud; but that night in their bed, the doctor perceives that his companion is pensive. He wraps a finger through one of the black-and-silver curls and tugs at it till he has his friend’s attention.

*

There is a vessel bound for Krete at the next moon.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge, huge thanks to my betas, [TSylvestris](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TSylvestris/profile) and [Chryse](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Chryse/profile).
> 
> Minos, like the Minotaur, is mythical in the first place, and even if he weren’t he would have preceded the Hellenic Greeks by, um, a couple of thousand years? The Minoan script, [Linear A,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A) hasn’t been deciphered, so few specifics of Minoan history are known, few personal names are known, and I haven’t troubled my pretty little head about it. 
> 
> They wouldn’t have called themselves Minoans, I don’t think, but Cretans, or, in my faux-authentic rendering, Kretans. The version of the Minotaur tale we all know seems to have reflected a simplistic porny interpretation by the Greeks of a myth of “mystic mating,” maybe something along the lines of the usual theological and nonsexual reading of the Song of Solomon, idk. I gave John a version of classical Greek attire, which is a complete anachronism. In short, this fic is a mash-up and a mess.
> 
> The names I’ve assigned John, Sherlock, and Mycroft are presumably all anachronisms. The Greek name [Chariton](http://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/ancient-greek) means “grace,” and “John” means “God has been gracious,” so that was good enough for me, plus best of luck finding a Greek name that starts with anything resembling a J.
> 
> [Scylax](http://www.behindthename.com/name/scylax/submitted) may mean “dog,” or “puppy.”
> 
> [Micythos](http://tekeli.li/onomastikon/Ancient-World/Greece/Male.html) is attested, but its meaning is unknown. 
> 
> We are all free to think of Minos as Moriarty.
> 
> For Chariton/John’s attire, see the Wikipedia article "Clothing in Ancient Greece." Again, anachronism. At least he could plausibly have a sword, this being the Bronze Age.
> 
> Shedet, which would have been one of the cities Chariton didn’t know any names of, is the modern Faiyum, in Egypt, where medicine was about as good as it got in the ancient world.


End file.
